Hope
by twinkle.exe
Summary: Trollfic.


_/It's a game of predator and prey/_

 _/When our sky and **clouds** disappear_ _/_

 _/Will you last another day?/_

The invasion came on a crisp, swelteringly hot greenleaf morning.

Robinheart yawned as she padded outside from the stuffy warriors' den, her black-and-brown tabby pelt burning. She sighed up at the scorching sun, having forgotten the cold leaf-bare winds that had once plagued the Clan when she was still an apprentice.

She raised her head to the bright blue sky, and, eyes squinted, ungratefully muttered for it to go away. As she said that, there was a faint rumble vibrating through the earth.

 _Ohhh, maybe it's thunder,_ the young warrior thought delightedly. A few other warriors, eating their morning meal, popped their heads up at the noise. Two shifted uncomfortably, almost simultaneously, murmuring to themselves. Robinheart blinked, but brushed their odd behavior off.

She grabbed a small sparrow off the fresh-kill pile, stripping off the feathers with practiced ease and savoring the grainy-grassy flavor.

But her enjoyment didn't last long. Robinheart heard a low grunt and felt another tremble in the ground. Bemused— thunder didn't sound like snorting— she glanced at her Clanmates.

Their eyes were wide and rounded, showing the whites, and their pelts spiked and bristled. Backs were arched and some cats were hissing.

The she-cat followed their stricken gazes and her own amber eyes stretched until they hurt as her brain tried to process what she saw.

It was a creature, standing like a Twoleg; front legs dangling at its sides, hind legs planted on the ground. But its features weren't at all like a Twoleg.

Dull, green skin like a frog's, but this was sickly pale and more calloused and ridden with bumps. Robinheart was frozen to the ground as she took in the sight.

The being's shoulders hunched over and its back slumped. There was a thatch of grimy, dirt-ridden brown fur atop its square-shaped head. A spotted fur pelt was tied around its hips. It had a huge, floppy nose, tiny, beady black eyes, and claws on the ends of its fat paws.

And worst of all, it was _gigantic_. It had a bulky, plump body with muscles rippling as it stared at the cats and opened its mouth— displaying yellow fangs and releasing a stream of stinky air.

Cries of terror shook the forest. Robinheart choked on her own air, breathing fast and labored. Her head was starting to feel light.

"Wrenstar, Iceberry, where are you?" she whispered under her breath, pelt spiking. The deputy, Wrenfeather, had been named leader after a patrol had found a bloodied, half-decayed skeleton. Robinheart had seen it herself. It had reeked of a horrid scent, as well as their previous leader's, Crowstar.

A horrid scent that smelled exactly like the creature in front of them.

 _Oh, no, no no no it can't be_

The flesh had decomposed by minuscule insects, maybe pecked at by crows. But not eaten by a giant. It _couldn't_ have been.

And yet, the putrid smell only grew stronger, mixing in with the Clan cats' fear-scent. It took a while for Robinheart, trapped in a frozen pool of despair, to realize that _more_ were coming.

Some cats flattened their ears, backing up and stumbling as they did. Others gave howls of war and sprung upon the massive beings, only to be shaken off like fleas or completely ignored.

The wind carried ominous words, and all the warriors could hear it. Where it came from they didn't know. Perhaps it came as a breath in the stirring of their spirit, or it had traveled from a river to crash ashore in their minds.

" _Supernatural_ ," it keened, wailing eerily yet silently. " _Not one of us_..."

And ever so noiselessly it seared a word into all the creatures of the earth, a word perhaps one would laugh at had it been in a kit-tale, but it struck dread into the hearts of the forest.

" _Troll..._ "

/ _Darkness, darkness, all beware/_

 _/Join the war/_

 _/If you **dare** /_

The ferns shuddered as rain poured down, licking their gentle leaves and eroding away the soil that they clung to. The world was gloomy, ridden in deep, dark colors.

Far below, it was even dimmer, to the point of almost-black like the edge of the night sky.

If there was any light in the world, Robinheart thought, it had disappeared a long time ago.

She no longer remembered the sun.

Hidden and tucked safely away underground, there was no need to hang on to memories that would just pull her upwards. The queen licked her belly, curling her tail protectively around the bulging appendage. Her pupils widened as they stared out into dark nothing, green eyes sharp and rimmed with an ever-present terror.

 _I wish I could be out there with him, fighting_.

But she had an important job as well. She had to take care of her unborn children.

The tabby inhaled another influx of stuffy mud-air, feeling fear clench her muscles.

 _How could any kit live in a place like this? How could any_ cat _live in a place like this?_

She shivered, a word hanging in the back of her mind.

 _It's their fault._

 _Trolls..._

Robinheart recited the lines she would pound into her kits. She'd said them over and over again until they were stuck in her mind. It had taken her about a week. How long would it take the lives in her stomach?

 _Trolls are dim-witted._ They didn't exactly _fight back_ to the armies of warriors that hit them every day, but instead caused major causalities by stepping on them and not even noticing.

 _Trolls are strong._ It was mainly becaus of their size. If a troll caught you, you would have no chance. That second attack was called the 'death grip'.

She'd seen that before, when she was still a soldier and not a to-be mother. Blood had stained the treetops.

 _Trolls are evil._

What would her kits say? Would they ask her to revive her buried memories, of the pandemonium and desperate times that erupted after the first invasion?

That would be fine.

Would they ask her of the before?

She didn't want to. They couldn't make her.

She could tell them all about the leader and mediocre cat never coming back, of the cats' main source of prey, rabbits, going extinct so the trolls could use their pelts as covering.

But not of the before. She refused.

Those memories were gone.

/ _Don't try your luck and_ _play this **game** /_

 _/Of love and death and life and war/_

 _/'Cause if you fall then you're to blame/_

She screamed but no one heard.

She was shattering inside but no one saw.

Warm bodies milled around her. Raspy tongues licked her forehead in offers of sympathy. Sorrowful meows filled the tunnel cavern.

And yet it all felt empty.

"Robinheart, Robinheart," her mate murmured, over and over again. But who was Robinheart? All she was, in her mind, was a 'she'...

She screeched mutely in her own blood.

Not just her blood, but her perhaps her dead childrens' blood too...

This time the word on the wind was " _miscarriage_ ".

The times of day blended together like dirt and water, creating muck, drowning here till she couldn't breathe yet stayed alive. She wasn't sure when they all let her be, but they did. The blood —why, oh why did that word keep haunting her thoughts?— was sticky in some spots and dried in others, and she didn't have the heart to clean up or move.

But she found that she had to, when the earth beneath her paws started to tremble. Not even scared, numb as a rock, she shuffled to one side.

Though perhaps she wasn't completely numb, because she could feel a spark of shock zipping through her paws when a brown nose popped out of the earth.

Rabbit.

Baby rabbit.

A storm thundered in her head. What was this? Had it come to mock her for her lost kits? Or was it merely a figment of her imagination? There hadn't been a trace of rabbit in a long, long time, and no mammal would live underground in a den filled with cats. _Under_ the underground? Certainly not.

She shrugged it off, expecting the baby to flee at any moment or for her mind to stop making it appear, but it hopped once, twice.

Three times, landing in her paws, snuffling and cocking its head.

It was, perhaps, a stupid rabbit with no instinct whatsoever to run away from its natural enemy. Then again, the trolls had been the one to kill its species off. The trolls were the predator now.

She opened her mouth and spoke to it.

"Little one." Her voice was dry. "Are you really here? Rabbit?"

And then something changed.

Nothing happened, but something changed.

Robinheart's mind freed itself from its clashing dissonance of grief and shock, her gaze clearing as she stared down at the trusting brown eyes.

She felt tired, but _she could feel_.

Her thoughts wandered around bright fields of grass, the fresh scent of river-water in new-leaf, a gust of air tickling her whiskers.

Stuck here in this den, she couldn't feel any of that.

What had Robinheart been thinking? Why did she let go of the recollections and let herself fall into this place?

 _This is no place for a cat to live_.

The warrior bathed for a moment in her memories, allowing them to lift her high and touch the stars for a brief, flitting moment, and promised herself that one day she would climb up to her real home.

What did it matter if there was danger up there, things that would push her back down?

 _I_ refuse _to be shoved into this predicament again. I will go up, stay up_.

A pang of hunger suddenly rippled through the tabby, bringing herself back to the present. She couldn't bring herself to make the killing blow to the animal in front of her that was supposed to be gone but defeated the odds.

Just like how the Clan was supposed to lose the war, but they hadn't. Yet.

"Rabbit," Robinheart mewed, drawing it closer. It didn't protest.

 _I could be crazy, but this feels right._

"Do you know what you are?" Her emerald orbs met the curious brown ones. "You're a survivor, rabbit, and you're my hope."

She withdrew her paw and the young rabbit paused for a moment before taking off, though not in fear. It kicked up dust and soil in its wake, revealing a fresh green sprout of grass.

 _Everything's upside down._ Robinheart blinked and shook her head.. _Rabbits should be scared of cats. Plants can't grow without proper sunshine_.

And she suddenly realized that there _was_ a shine in this tunnel.

 _Hope is brighter than I've ever realized._

 _Hope is light._


End file.
